Who wouldn’t want to be Mama? She can do it all! First she came over and made some killer pot stickers.

But Mama is human, like the rest of us, and we all make mistakes, don’t we? Unfortunately the stove must have been on too high, and she burnt the pot stickers.“Don’t worry, Mama will fix it.”

She decided to take a whack at a different recipe, and moved onto baking.

Didn’t her chocolate cake come out beautifully?

She was so happy!

Mama is so well rounded. Not only is she wonderful in the kitchen, she works her magic in the garden as well!

But, just like in cooking, not everything goes as planned. Not enough water, I guess

Recently, Mama ventured into the crafting world! She’s tired of her yellow apron, and wanted a nice pink gingham apron to compliment her sparkly kerchief.

She’s such a jokster!

Oh no! I guess the bobbin is in wrong! Mama gets very angry when she has to use that darn seam ripper. (Don’t we all?)

--------Onto the nitty-gritty. Here is a close up of the sequin work. It is in perfect rows to simulate pixels.

Close up of her eye:

One of Mama’s “Angry Eyes”

I also made the felt food for the photo shoot:Mama’s Cake:

Other pastries not used in the photo shoot:

Pot stickers:

I also made a shrimp, but it came out weird. Obligatory “cat in the shot” picture

She’s got to get into everything!

So then I put it on her

Argh!!

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And….onto the actual project. This is Craftster, so no little project will do. It must be Epic (yes---with a capital E). I toyed around with perler beads, tile mosaic, cross stitch, beads, etc. A "time to cook" clock idea floated around in my head (I still might do that), along with embroidered kitchen towels, a perler bead magnet set, and a few other things. But none of them were EPIC! I don't know when the idea actually hit me, but I decided to be Cooking Mama. As in for Halloween. An Epic Halloween costume. Yes--that's it. Now, what to make the "Pixel" images out of? Squares of felt? Beads? Nope--you guessed it---not Epic enough.

SEQUINS!! Yes! I'll pixelate her face out of sequins!

I started out by sketching her face onto some construction paper.

Then I transferred that image onto some ½ inch foam, and cut it out.

I then cut out some flesh colored lycra slightly larger than the foam head, and gently wrapped it around the foam as if I was re-covering a cushion.

Be careful of that hot glue gun though! OUCH! This is what happened after the tip of my ring finger grazed some freshly placed hot glue, and in a state of panic, I ripped it off….along with the top few layers of skin. Yeah….this put a damper on the project for a little while….

But, all was ok, and I was able to finish wrapping the foam. (Sorry for the blur here---I had left my camera in my fiancé’s car, and have taken all of these pictures so far with my cell phone.)

Then I painted on the basic elements of Mama’s face. I did this for two reasons—one to give me an idea of where to place the sequins, and two, so that the areas between the sequins would have nice color as well.

The next step I don’t have a picture of. Take a look back at that first picture of sequins. Yes…it’s a multi pack of sequins. And it must be separated. This took hours. I separated it into black, clear, brown, silver, two shades of pink, etc. I separated and separated. And separated.

After I had piles of all my colors, I began gluing the sequins down, one row at a time. I used a ruler to make sure my lines of glue were straight to really give it the pixilated look. Here is her kerchief done, and her hair outlined.

Here I am lying each sequin down. By the time I got to the eyes and hair I got smart and started using a toothpick instead of my glue-covered fingers.

Close up

I don’t have a picture of the finishing process, but I finished off the back of the head with some fusible white felt to make it neat, glued a foam hat from the dollar store on the back, and glued on a few layers of netting for the mouth. I also made Mama’s apron and some felt food for the photo shoot!

Holy amazing! And you have a Badge of Crafty Courage! I love hot glue guns and I get burned a lot a lot, but NEVER that bad. Like, that wound is angry. I can't believe just ripping the glue off did that to you, it's never happened to me that bad. I'll complain a lot less when I get my little burns or just one layer taken off. Did this take you the whole month? And how do you see where you're going in that loveliness?

Thanks for all the awesome comments!Surprisingly my finger is almost 100% healed! It was quite painful for some time there- and yes, it hurt as much as it looked!It did take me the better part of the month to do--- between designing, sequining, sewing, etc. I'm unemployed right now so this kept me busy!And I can see through the mouth. It's hard to believe, but I have a pretty good range of vision in it-- and yes, I've walked around the house wearing it (just to freak everyone out!) and haven't bumped into anything yet!

Very Epic! Great idea, too! I'm awful with challenges. I think, "wow that would be a really fun challenge, and look at the great prizes!" then I get bogged down in the planning stages, and never get around to doing it. Really a shame, because my brain went along the same ideas as you, except I also thought of doing a beaded Cooking Mama pocket on an apron, (which, unless I'm a beading fiend this weekend, isn't going to happen).

In any case, I think you did a great job on your costume, and I love the flames (and the accessories)!